Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category

We had several photo pros on board the National Geographic Explorer, including Lindblad staff photographers Michael Nolan and Eric Guth and National Geographic photographers Sisse Brimberg and Cotton Coulson. This photo “team” was always readily available to provide guests with tips and critiques, as well as technical assistance.

Some of the ways they used to help improve the quality of the photos taken by guests was to lead seminars on photography and photographic techniques, as well as have open critiques of submitted photos. There’s no question that general photo quality improved as a whole over the three weeks we were traveling the seas.

The culmination of the photographic experience was a computer-based slide show put together by Mike Nolan, including most of the submissions from the first two critiques, plus a final set of photos, all contributed by a large number of guests and staff alike. There are many amazing photos from our trip included in the slide show, including wildlife, landscapes, abstract works, and even ones of various people you might or might not recognize.

While the slide show was distributed to folks on memory cards on board the ship the last day at sea, I offered to Mike that I could also post it here on our site for on-line access by our fellow guests and their friends and family, and that offer was gladly accepted.

The link below leads to a .MOV file containing the slide show, which can be played back via QuickTime, iTunes, or any of a number of other video players. You can download Apple’s QuickTime here in case you need it.

The .MOV file is just over 50MB in size, and takes about 32 minutes to play through (there are a lot of photos there). There is no sound in the file, so don’t be alarmed if you hear nothing when you start the slide show. I would suggest playing some Jazz or Classical music in the room you view the slide show in to add a nice aural ambiance.

To play the .MOV file, click on the link below, and then save the .MOV file in a local directory on your system. Once it is fully downloaded, and assuming you have QuickTime or another compatible player installed, you can double click on the file to play it. You may also have to click on the “play” button in your video player to start the slide show.

On this day, we met our first gentoos and saw krill, which is one of the most important food sources for the wildlife in Antarctica.

Regurgitated Krill

We arrived in Port Lockroy in the morning waiting for officials to board from the base only to find that they thought we were coming in the afternoon. The internet is very unreliable and so they did not get the email saying we were arriving early.

At the beginning of our journey, everyone wrote down their names on one of six pages indicating what group we would be in. This is because of a 100 person limit onshore; you could be on a zodiac or kayaking without breaking this limit because you are technically not on shore. In this case, groups 1 & 2 stayed on board, groups 3 & 4 went to Jougla (think French), and groups 5 & 6 went to Lockroy. The groups rotated places every hour and 15 minutes (mind you, this is not very precise, because people stay longer in some locations and lose track of time quite easily).

We had been waiting to see the penguins after watching a leopard seal chase some zodiacs. Almost the minute we set course for Jougla, my dad asked how you would pronounce the name, turns out there is tons of mispronunciations from other languages and Lockroy is actually a mangling of a French name by the English.

Penguin watching the strange blue penguins

I stepped on shore and was amazed to find that the gentoo penguins were absolutely everywhere and if we were supposed keep 15 feet away from these penguins we would be in the water. The penguins walked along the same paths us humans were using and the penguins had right of way. If you were in the way the penguin would not even look at you and either brush right past your legs or just waddled off onto another path. The rocks that we stood on were slimy with penguin poop and so keeping one’s balance with penguins in every direction was a challenge.

The chicks were at a stage where they chase adults to feed them and humans seemed easier to catch, they would squawk until they lost their patience and then looked for their next victim. The penguins had the tendency to be right behind you, so we had to watch where we walked more so than we had to with the Adelie penguins.

gentoo penguin feeding chick

Man cornered by two gentoo chicks

Feed baby penguin!

Port Lockroy was once a place where Norwegian whalers would anchor and they did so from 1911-31. What is left from those days are whale skeletons above and below (David Cothran, the trip’s undersea specialist had been diving there and took video, which included the video of whales’ skeletons). These date from before the whalers learned how to get oil from the bones and so they just left the rest of the whale to drift or sink after they were done.

Someone, who had a lot of time on their hands, put together a makeshift whale skeleton (makeshift because the bones are mostly from different whales, like one is blue, sperm, or right whale and some are in the wrong position) from all the bones lying around. This skeleton had penguins wandering through the bones and one was even trying to use it a windbreaker.

Makeshift whale skeleton and the human comparison

Antarctic blue eyed shags were nesting nearby the gentoo colony and they did not seem bothered in the least by the other being present, unless they came too close to the other’s nest.

Pair of Antarctic blue eyed shags

On a lonely little hill, there was an adult gentoo on a nest that contained a small chick and an egg. Many photos were taken but the likely hood that the chick would survive is very low, because it is too late in the season.

Adult gentoo, baby, and egg

After taking many photos of a Jougla and its inhabitants, I found myself near the landing station without a clue where the rest of my family was. I guessed my mom and brother had gone off to Lockroy and that my dad was somewhere on Jougla and he would take his time getting to Lockroy. So, I headed off to the Lockroy base to see the very small museum.

The signs that indicate that you are in Port Lockroy

I walked through the museum rapidly and bumped into my brother, who then brought me over to my mom. They had been sitting on the porch outside of the museum and were being entertained by the poop and vomit eating snowy sheathbills and their chicks that had a particular interest in the poop-laden bottoms of our muck boots.

Snowy sheathbill chick and bottom of muck boot

People that arrived from a yacht had caught the interest of some gentoo chicks and the chicks started trying to tunnel, headfirst, between the legs of one of the men. My mom’s theory is these penguins like the color orange because the boots the man was wearing were bright orange.

Well, the day started with a landing at what would have been the preferred site for Shackleton and his men, Cape Lookout. They attempted to land at Cape Valentine, but the real place where they stayed and Shackleton sailed from to South Georgia, is Point Wild.

Cape Lookout is mostly rock and barely any beach, but the rock is very interesting due to the layers and layers that are each about an inch thick on average. We separated into groups and took a zodiac cruise, with a 15 minute stop on a small beach. The main penguin species were chinstrap but a few macaroni penguins were hopping among them.

chinstrap penguin

two macaroni penguins

The macaroni’s interesting features are an orange crest that connects in the middle, red eyes, and an orange beak. The macaroni penguin comes by its name from the nickname given to the hats with a feather on them, think of the song Yankee Doodle “he stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni” like the macaroni penguins’ crest.

Macaroni penguin shaking off water

macaroni penguin with rock in beak

This was the first day we saw elephant seals (by the way, that’s why the island is called Elephant Island, because that is what the discoverer of the island saw…elephant seals and incidentally, if you look at a map of the island, it sort of looks like the head of an elephant).

Elephant seal male pup winking

Pintado petrels were in the hundreds and the small Wilson’s storm petrels were hopping above the water in among the crowds of petrels as they flew from one section of ocean to another. To add to the excitement, a penguin had died (or was killed) and all the petrels were scrambling to get piece of it, as well as other species of petrel. The Pintado petrels were like piranhas and they were loud.

Pintada petrels eating penguin remains

Wilson's storm petrel

Pintada petrel taking off

Wilson's storm petrel hopping on water

Pintada petrels taking off

The hotel department provided hot chocolate on our zodiac cruise by sending out a zodiac with hot chocolate and alcoholic fixings. The zodiac they used had a flag waving above that said “Hot Choco” in red.

The Hot Choco Pirates

The funny thing today was that many of the penguins seemed to be very clumsy. First we saw a chinstrap slip and fall on a cliff face, another chinstrap kept on slipping into the ocean because of the waves, and a macaroni penguin slid off a steep rock face after desperately trying to stay up right, and splashed into the ocean. My mom was putting into the little virtual speech bubbles above their heads “I meant to do that”.

It was cold, rather dark, and windy…in the volcanic caldera of Deception Island. The caldera contains the remains of the Norwegian Hektor whaling station and the British base B (used for both military purposes during the 40s and scientific purposes during late 50s and well into the 60s). The people that had worked at the base and the base itself had suffered from small eruptions, mud slides, stormy weather, and the like. They finally gave up and abandoned the base in 1969.

Today, the roofs have sagged in or there are none at all, parts of the buildings have been buried by mud slides and the silos that once held whale oil now rust, and you can still make out some of the words on them.

Rusting Silo used for storing whale oil

Molting gentoo penguins were huddled near a cement base where a building once stood and all that remains now is a stove, some cupboards, and a few weathered planks.

Molting Gentoo penguin next to cement block base

There is a hanger further out and the wind tore at my face as I hiked to it. It used to contain an airplane (an American tourist decided to restore it but the British protested and commissioned a ship to go pick it up for a lot of money) but now all it holds is snow covered with ash.

this hanger is far out and a windy path to get there

Door to the hanger

Inside the hanger containing more snow covered in ash

On the other side of the beach, the skeletal remains of boats are abundant, with Skuas resting nearby.

Boat and skuas

Skua

I love taken pictures of old buildings and you can get some amazing shots if the lighting is just right.

Former room in a now collapsing building

Building on Deception Island

The snow covered with ash looked a lot like dirt pie; Oreos crumbled on top of ice creamy stuff (my dad suggested that I was hungry).

snow covered by ash

The caldera is open to the ocean and the only way in and out via Ship is through Neptune’s Bellows, which may seem large but contains rocks in the middle of the opening, so our ship had to stick one of the sides of the opening.

My family and I, had all brought our bathing suites thinking of a natural hot tub, but….The heat from the volcano may have once heated the waters in the caldera but now it provides a slightly warmer (or not even that) polar plunge!

One of the things that has been incredibly difficult to convey in my photography is the sheer size of Antarctica. Our visions of the Antarctic continent had always been of long flat expanses of ice and snow, but Antarctica is anything but flat. In fact Antarctica is the tallest continent in the world, and a fair bit of that height is actually ice (4000-5000 feet in some areas) composed in large part of glaciers.

Earlier today we were at Elephant Island, perhaps most famous for its role in the tales of Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance expedition. Elephant Island is where Shackleton led his men on three small boats (the life boats of the Endurance) after breaking free of the pack ice in the Weddell Sea. Shackleton and several of his men continued on to find rescue on South Georgia Island, and managed to return to rescue the men he left behind on Elephant Island after several attempts to get though in the midst of the Antarctic winter. It took several months to rescue the men, during which time they set up a makeshift camp at a place dubbed Point Wild (after Frank Wild, the man Shackleton left in command). It’s a brilliant tale, and I would heartily recommend anyone wanting to see what true death-defying adventure is all about read the books on the Endurance by Alfred Lansing and by Caroline Alexander.

It was Point Wild we visited earlier today, and one of the most prominent features of the area at present is a glacier wall. This is not even close to the largest we’ve seen, which makes the photos I present below perhaps even more dramatic.

First, here’s a photo of a small part of the glacier wall. If you look carefully, in the lower right, you’ll see one of the National Geographic Explorer’s Zodiacs along with a Zodiac driver wearing a red parka. The Zodiac is perhaps 100 feet from the wall.

The glacier wall at Point Wild with a Zodiac and driver at lower right

Next, here’s an image of the National Geographic Explorer in front of the glacier wall. The National Geographic Explorer is 367.4 feet (112 meters) long, and was anchored about 500 yards from the glacier. The glacier makes the Explorer look like a toy.

The National Geographic Explorer in front of the glacier wall

As a backdrop, the glacier is perfect. Here are some Chinstrap penguins on a spit of land quite some distance from the glacier.

Chinstrap penguins on a spit of land some distance from the glacier

Below is a close-up of the cracks in the glacier wall. The blue coloring is not an illusion. Glacial ice is very dense and contains little air. That density and water purity gives the ice that amazing blue color.

A close-up of the glacier wall

Here is an image showing a vertical slice of the glacier wall. You may be able to match the cavern at the bottom with some of the images above.

A vertical slice of the glacier wall

But if you look very carefully at the bit of rock sticking up out of the water at the lower right of the above image you might see a couple of black dots. Those dots are Chinstrap penguins. But if you can’t make them out, let me provide an enlargement of that part of the above image, immediately below:

Close-up of the lower right portion of the glacier wall vertical slice showing two penguins on the bit of rock

I find the size of the glacier to be stunning, and in past days we’ve passed by hundreds of glaciers at least this big if not much bigger. Hopefully the above photos help give you some idea of how truly large things are here in Antarctica.

As a final image, let me leave you with the one below, which is a panorama composed of 23 individual shots stitched together. If you click on the image you can see the full size, 7763-pixel wide image (which is many megabytes). If you want to see a more reasonable size, click here.

This is a panorama of the glacier wall at Point Wild on Elephant Island in Antarctica - made of 23 adjacent images

It’s tough to believe that only 8-10 years ago, decent digital cameras were not as ubiquitous as they are today, and those of us who wanted high quality images still shot slide or print film, limiting ourselves to approximately 36 pictures per roll, and waiting days or weeks before we could get them developed to see how things turned out.

My, how times have changed.

Here are the daily tallies of what Krystyana and I have shot every day since we got to Chile over a week and a half ago:

Date(s)

Location

Photos taken

Feb. 7-8

Santiago, Chile

281

Feb. 9

Santiago to Valparaiso, Chile

760

Feb. 10

Valparaiso and Vina del Mar, Chile

269

Feb. 11

Ushuaia, Argentina

233

Feb. 12

First day at sea

240

Feb. 13

Second day at sea

1246

Feb. 14

Landfall in Antarctica

1199

Feb. 15

Pourquoi Pas Island and Kayaking

995

Feb. 16

Port Lockroy & Cuverville Island

1175

Feb. 17

Deception Island

798

Feb. 18

Elephant Island

1068so far

The split is reasonably even between Krystyana and myself, meaning that we’re each averaging 500-600 photos a day now that we’re in Antarctica. And that doesn’t even include the video I’ve been shooting.

It’s a good thing bits are cheap these days.

What’s truly scary is that a majority of the images are pretty darn good. Now that big problem is spending the time reviewing all the photos and whittling them down to a bare minimum to be able to share them.